Bruises
by Metallover130
Summary: Something that became unexpectedly introspective, and it all started with a bruise. SetoXJou I don't own YGO.


I have new bruises; Seto doesn't comment on them. He never does. I think he knows where they come from, and so presumes it's better not to bring it up. I used to get into a lot of fights because of the reputation I once carried so proudly on my sleeve, and even though Seto never asks I mumble my piss-poor excuse anyway. _I got into another fight_, I say. In a sense, it's the truth. He knows I'm not being completely honest with him, but this isn't an honest thing we're doing, so dishonesty is nothing new.

Ten months we've been at this game, and he won so long ago I can't see why he keeps insisting on rematches. I always figure it's because he just likes to win, and beating me isn't hard. I get him off in more ways than one, you could say: I stroke his ego, and his _ego_.

He undresses me today, like he always does. That's one part of him I find almost endearing, his weird conditions of this "relationship." He undresses me, and then I watch him undress himself. I'd watch if he even if he didn't tell me to—how could I not? Seto Kaiba cuts a lean, sensual figure, and to have the privilege of getting to see him naked is one of the few things that get me through the day anymore.

I dropped out of school two months ago, which is part of the reason behind the bruises I sport now on my jaw and shoulders. I dropped out mostly because there was no saving my sorry ass. I wouldn't have graduated anyway, and already I work two jobs. Not because I want to work, but because I hate to go home. I hadn't been home in weeks; my address was whatever couch I was sleeping on that particular night. Honda and Yugi were good about putting me up for awhile, Yugi especially, and they'd have let me stay forever with no complaint, but I hated to leech off them like that. It was my proverbial bed, I'd proverbially sleep in it.

"You're shaking," he snickers, and I am, near uncontrollably. He does to this to me, so effortlessly, as easily as he breathes, and I don't care at all. I want his hands on my body, his mouth on mine, him inside me, burning and tearing and throbbing. I want new pain to replace the old pain, and fresh blood to wash away the dried blood. Kaiba knows this I think, and maybe that's why he obliges me and my strange, sick whims. I tell him to hurt me however he wants: with his nails, his teeth, his cock, I'm not choosy, just so long as he makes me feel something. But another of Kaiba's quirks is that he _won't_ hurt me, at least not without somehow making up for it with pleasure in return. He'll fuck me hard and rough, grind my face into the pillow, humiliate and degrade me with his words and his body, and then make me feel so good I can't think straight.

"You like it rough, don't you?" he'll ask, genuinely perplexed, as if he can't comprehend why I'd want to hurt when I'm already suffering. I only smile when he asks me this, and say something like: "That's my kink." But that's not what I want to tell him. I want to tell him that I hate it rough, I hate when it hurts, but it _has_ to hurt, to make me forget the other hurts and aches, like biting your lip to forget the needle. Gentility is something I'd never expect from Kaiba, and I'd never ask. I don't think I deserve it.

I've been lying to them, you see. Yugi, Honda, Anzu, everyone. They used to question me about my sudden disappearances when I was still in school and skipped compulsively (something I never used to do) or shirked on meeting them later. My jobs were only so much of an excuse when they knew my schedule. "Let's hang out Friday," Yugi would suggest, and they all knew I didn't work Friday, but I'd go and concoct some stupid bullshit reason why I couldn't tag along. Homework some days, chores others; the easiest way was to tell them I was having issues at home, and it made me feel like shit having to lie to them when they cared and understood, but I had an addiction by then, and like any junkie I went to extreme lengths to satisfy it.

My addiction was called Seto Kaiba, and his hard, cruel body.

He was loyal, though. Never once did he come without making sure I did too, and even when it wasn't spectacular is was still good—better then good, it was _grrrrrrreat_. (Har-de-har.) And even if he wasn't gentle he was giving, firm, and maybe even kind of warm, in his own way. He didn't hold me after sex and we rarely talked, but his hand usually found its way to my face, and I'd catch him staring at me while he absentmindedly stroked my hair.

--

I'm completely thrown when out of the blue he offers to let me live with him. It was more an order than an offer the way he put it: "Stay." He still treated me like a dog, saying "stay" like that, but I was too far gone to care. He'd wrecked me, as surely as if he'd run me down in a semi. I was broken, desecrated, and dissected by his very eyes, which never failed to make me shiver with their cold, piercing gaze only shattered by the smouldering embers of lust when he took me, and it was in those precious times, when his composure faltered, that I got to really see him. I only knew of his childhood what he'd told me himself, but from what I could see both of us had gotten the muddy end of the stick when it came to our fathers.

I'm sure that's what he thinks about when he sees my bruises, like right now. He'll stare at them with those secretly passionate eyes, brush them with the calloused palm of his hand, and I can feel a hatred in him, like hot murderous fury. This is a real part of Kaiba too, his anger, and as terrifying as it is its also comforting, because the fact he has it is proof of a human side to his emotions, which even I don't often see.

"I know you don't have anywhere else to go," he keeps on, sitting bare-chested in the dark, his eyes fixated on the largest bruise on my neck, where my father's hand had squeezed off the air in my lungs. He won't look me in the face when he talks like this, so seriously, so carefully, when he might slip and—God forbid—show he cares. "Stay." There it is again.

"I'm not your pet," I growl, and he smirks, but its mirthless and not real.

"You're as much a mutt as the day I first beat you," he laughs quietly, and even with a haughty expression I can hear the undertone behind the words. _But you're my mutt_, I hear, and I want to laugh too, but I can't find the energy to do so. I'm so tired, I only want to sleep until someone forces me to wake. I wonder vaguely why we can't just say what we really mean and be done with it.

"Can I really just do that?" I ask. I think of Shizuka, and the gang. I've been lying to them for so long, about where I go and what I do when I'm there, and it seemed so pointless to have done so when the answer to my problem was literally right in front of me.

"You've never let anything stop you before," he intones flatly, and I do laugh a little that time, because he's _right_. I'm too damn stubborn for my own good; that was how I got here in the first place, that idiotic pride. I'd gotten involved with the devil in his own territory, and convinced myself the entire time I knew where the exit was, too blinded to realize it was already gone.

I feel his hand on me again, and a part of me inside is rejoicing, because I crave his touch more than anything. _Yes!_ the voice inside me screams. _For the love of god, put your hands on me!_ He's touching the bruises again, and I see in the tilt of his brow that he _does_ know how they got there, no doubt about it, and that he's as sick of all the lying as I am. Then he does something I'd never have expected him to do:

He leans in and kisses the bruise on my jaw. His lips, fire-hot and persistent, sear me inside and out, even before out tongues touch and he singes me again, burning away the miserable taste in my mouth of self-pity and confusion. He's over me then, all tight muscles and raging hunger, ravishing me without hesitation, and I succumb to it joyously, celebrating his heat on and in me, and I mourn it when he pulls away.

"Stay," he says again, still sporting his characteristically unaffected face, but I feel the tension in him with our bodies so close, naked and unprotected, totally bared to the other. I feel his resolution. It _is_ an order; like the dog I am, I have no choice but to follow.

"Okay," I answer, and while he fucks me senseless he whispers fervent, husky promises in my ear, overpowering the pulse of blood in my head with his soft words that elicit moans having nothing to do with the punishment he's doling on me.

"The only one allowed to bruise you," he murmurs possessively, "is _me_."

"The only one allowed to bruise me," I pant in reply, " is _you_."

--

I have new bruises. I've never been happier to hurt.


End file.
